Your Turn: Oct. 9

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, October 8, 2016

A Syrian woman holds her four-week old baby at the municipality-run Souda refugee camp in Greece. A reader defends the push by Texas officials to keep refugees out.

A Syrian woman holds her four-week old baby at the municipality-run Souda refugee camp in Greece. A reader defends the push by Texas officials to keep refugees out.

Photo: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI /AFP /Getty Images

Your Turn: Oct. 9

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Safety first

My husband and I have taken our two young grandsons to Síclovía the past several years, and we commend all who are responsible for promoting, sponsoring and supporting it.

This year, we became aware of and took advantage of the free helmets provided to anyone who wanted one. Our sincerest thanks to the organization that made this important safety equipment available, and I hope many other people in attendance took advantage, as well.

This reveals the typical progressive/liberal bias against reflective thought and in favor of feelings and emotions.

While no person of reasonable sensibilities could not be moved by the pictures of Middle Eastern children in desperate situations, the conclusion that their parents should be admitted en masse is flawed. The problem is assimilation.

While immigrants arriving here before 1920 were primarily Europeans from Christian countries, these newest people are not. Without hundreds, if not thousands, of years of familiarity with Western cultural norms, their general tendency is to form enclaves, islands of cultural identity. I travel often to Europe and have seen firsthand this refusal to assimilate. The “sophisticated” coastal elites who dominate current conversations deny this, labeling their opponents racists, bigots, etc.

The recent terrorist attacks, though, have in large part come from first- or second-generation immigrants who have chosen to embrace the values of their native cultures and reject our values of personal responsibility and tolerance.

Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal expressed the problem clearly when he said, “Immigration without assimilation is not immigration; it’s an invasion.”

Agnese’s behavior at the UIW luncheon that brought about his downfall was despicable. If the board had not removed him, I would never have encouraged anyone to attend the university again. I understand he may have been right for the university at one time, but his time was over.

I must take exception to the male-bashing and overgeneralizations in this article. Is this really front-page news? Whenever men generalize about women’s proclivities, we are set upon in a most vicious fashion by the libbers and told to shut our misogynist mouths.

The writer compares men in general with Donald Trump, especially in the tendency to “talk over” women. I’m not Donald Trump. He’s from New York. They talk over each other all the time there, and I don’t like it, either. Here in the genteel South, we’re taught better manners.

Here’s a generalization for you: Any point a husband or boyfriend makes in an argument with their beloved is most often merely the beginning of another argument!

There are vile comments being made that when Hillary Clinton becomes president, some “patriots” will be armed and rise up. That is treason.

These people need to understand that what has made this great nation we call America the envy of the world is our ability to govern ourselves.

Every four years our government changes hands, not with bullets but with ballots. That’s what sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. If you want to change that system, you are not a patriot.

I have seen and reviewed the interviews with the independent candidates on television several times. I cannot get any steam to have interest in either individual. I am 71, and I have never before felt that I had no one to vote for in the presidential election.

I guess I can just take a blindfold that says “I voted,” put it on before entering the booth, and just push buttons pretending that it means something. It means we are in trouble.

Every San Antonio-area driver and his dog ought to know not to drive into high water crossings. Yet many still do.

Whatever the rescue costs to police, fire and emergency units, I would like to see local government enact a policy advertised and enforced by a warning such as this: “Drive into high water and don’t make it through? It’ll cost you $5,000 or your vehicle. Now turn around, and stop wasting our time.”